Information is unquestionably one of the most valuable commodities of modern day society. The ability to obtain and provide information quickly and efficiently is essential to the success of any commercial enterprise or venture. Businesses, for example, have a need to provide their customers with comprehensive information on its products and services. The importance of information is so vital that much of the focus of developing technology is centered on making information available in as instantaneous and reliable a manner as possible.
One source of instantaneous information is the standard, everyday telephone. Interactive telephone systems, for example, enable a user to interactively request information through a computerized interface. These systems typically utilize predefined or prerecorded menus that a user accesses by calling in to a central number. The predefined menus typically enable a user to request information by stepping through various predefined choices that remain the same regardless of who the caller is or of the content of the information being accessed. Such information may include accessing account information, movie times, service requests, etc.
Another popular source of information is the Internet. The advent of the Internet has enabled users to access a wide amount of information. Internet users are able to “browse” through millions of websites located on the world wide web to obtain desired information. Users of the Internet are able to designate the Uniform Resource Identifier (or URL) of a desired website, and are thereafter able to navigate through the menus and functions offered by the website as a means to obtain information or services.
A problem with these systems is that the menu structure is typically set and not customized to a particular user's preferences or customized to the information available to that user. Therefore, a user may have to wade through a host of inapplicable options to get to the one or two options applicable to that user. Further, a user may be interested in particular information. With existing telephone call-in systems as well as most websites, that user has to input the same series of options or cycle through the same web pages or menus each time they want to hear or access that information. If the user desires to hear the information frequently, the telephone input system described is a very time consuming and wasteful method of accessing that information. Moreover, if a user is interested only in knowing if a particular value or set of values has changed over a predetermined period of time, in such a system, the user is required to initiate a call and wade through all of the information to determine if the particular value has changed.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.